


The Bunhead and the Soldier

by cherrylove



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 07:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2642879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrylove/pseuds/cherrylove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon is the only one who can make it to New York City to see Sansa dance in her first principal role.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bunhead and the Soldier

Three years ago on that day, Sansa left for the city. When the letter came from the New York City Ballet Company, she didn’t hesitate to leave. She’d barely graduated high school before she was gone. At first, phone calls, emails, and Skype dates were regular when she got home from rehearsal and he wasn’t working, but then she landed herself a role outside of the corps and he left for basic training, their tentative relationship crumbled and she started dating a guy who was in the corps. 

He kept up with Robb and helped Arya with her soccer skills and threatened her boyfriend, Gendry, from time to time and that was how he ended up in New York City on a Friday night hundreds of miles from home when he needed to be at formation the next morning. Arya mentioned Sansa finally landing a big principal role in The Firebird, a ballet none of them were extremely familiar with, and how none of the Starks were going to be able to go. Robb and his wife were expecting a baby any day now, she was leaving for a soccer tournament three states over, Bran was paralyzed, and Mr. and Mrs. Stark were going out of town to visit Lysa Arryn, Mrs. Stark’s sister, with Bran and Rickon, who was too young to do anything on his own. Though Arya mentioned it, she would never ask him to go see the ballet, but Mrs. Stark did. Jon could hardly refuse her. She never asked anything of him and if she did, it was reluctantly. Catelyn gave him the ticket Sansa sent and bought him a seat on a flight that would leave early on the day of the show. 

Jon watched as Sansa danced across the stage with the same grace and beauty he became familiar with all those years ago, but it was more refined now. She moved with more confidence and she was an even more impressive dancer than before. Jon could remember the first time he ever watched Sansa dance. She was 16 and landed a big role in The Nutcracker with the local ballet company. She’d danced as Clara and he was mesmerized by her. She seemed to float across the stage and get lost in the role she was playing. He remembered going every night to watch her dance as Clara and bringing her flowers every night. He remembered the look on her face after each show when she realized that she’d given an amazing show. She would come bounding out of the backstage doors with a bright smile on her face and he would tell her how great she danced and how beautiful she looked. Jon could see why she loved dancing so much. She was fantastic and could probably dance circles around other girls. Sansa was normally graceful and beautiful, but onstage when she was dancing it was multiplied infinitely. If she’d been graceful and beautiful then, she was ethereal and celestial now. 

After the show was over he sat there for a few moments, awed by what he’d just watched Sansa do. He wasn’t sure how long he stayed in his seat after the show ended and hadn’t yet made a move to leave when a man dressed in all black and a headset walked up to him. 

“Hello sir, I…” the man started. 

“Oh, um. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to be here so long I just. The principle was an...old friend and I guess I was...blown away. I didn’t realize I’d been here so long…” Jon rambled.

The man shook his head, “No, don’t worry about it. I’m not security or anything. I’m a stagehand, Sansa sent me for you. She saw you in the audience and wanted me to bring you back to her dressing room.”

“Oh,” Jon said simply, looking at the man for a confused moment and then stood from his seat, “Lead the way.” 

The man led him down the aisles and through a large, metal door to the backstage area. They walked down a long hallway with dozens of doors on either side. They stopped in front of the door with the words principal dancer printed on it. The man in the black knocked on the door. 

“Coming!” called a soft voice that Jon hadn’t heard in years. 

The door swung open and revealed Sansa with her hair still up in a bun adorned with her headpiece from the ballet dressed in jeans and a sweater with bare feet. A smile spread across her face when she saw Jon. She turned to the man, “Thank you. I’ll see you at tomorrow’s show.” The man nodded and left them, walking back down the long hallway.

“Hi Jon, come in for a minute. I need to finish getting dressed,” she told him with a smile, stepping back into the room and leaving the door open for him.

Jon stepped inside and ran a hand through his short, cropped hair. He closed the door behind himself and looked around the room. There vases of flowers and gift baskets full of decadent foods. He turned to where she stood at the vanity and spotted a flower arrangement that could only be from her family. It was filled with blue and purple flowers; Sansa’s favorite colors. The other arrangements around the room were made up of pinks and reds with some yellows thrown in and obviously from people who didn’t know her.

She turned around, her hair down with a crocheted hat on, “I can’t believe how short your hair is...it’s surreal.” She sat down on the stool and pulled on her boots, “I’ve only ever seen you with long hair.”

Jon nodded, “Yeah. The military doesn’t exactly approve of the long curls.” 

Sansa nodded, “I imagine they wouldn’t.” She stood up and grabbed her coat from the couch, “Come with me. I want to take you somewhere. We can grab coffee on the way.”

Jon smiled, “Sure.” 

Sansa led Jon through upper Manhattan, stopping at a Starbucks and then waving down a cab. She told the driver to take them to Battery Park. The ride was mostly silent except for when she pointed out places she liked to go. The cab stopped and they got out, Sansa paid the cab driver and then led him down to a bench near the water that looked out on the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn. Sansa shivered and gripped her cup a little tighter as the breeze from the water washed over them.  
“You looked beautiful on stage Sansa. I didn’t realize how much I missed watching you dance and lose yourself in what you’re doing. I’d almost forgotten how much I could get lost in watching you do what you love,” Jon said, looking at her briefly before looking back out at the water.

“I’d forgotten what it was like to see someone who understood my dancing so completely and my love for it and the way I lose myself in it, sitting down in the audience. I’m so used to it being benefactors who just want to see me perform a perfect show that I almost forgot what a difference it made to do that perfect show and have someone know exactly what it means to me. It was also nice to have someone in the audience who knew how hard I worked to get to the principal role,” Sansa told him.

“Arya told me you got the principal role and then Mrs. Stark asked me to come up here when they realized no one would be able to make it. I thought someone should be here for you. I know how much you wanted this. I’m really proud of you Sansa,” Jon told her.

“Thank you Jon.” She took a sip of her drink, a blush spreading across her cheeks and looked over at him. She stood up and held her hand out to him, “I want to show you something else.”

Jon took her hand let her lead him through the park. She stopped them in front of a twisted, bronzy, gold globe sitting inside a fenced in circle of grass. She looked up at it and then at him.

“This globe was in the plaza of the World Trade Center when the towers fell on 9/11. I found it on one of my first trips here. There were tons of people surrounding it. You know, I like to come here sometimes and just...think. It reminds me of you. I come here sometimes when I miss you too. I just...knew you would love it here in this park. It made me feel closer to you. I came here a lot when Robb told me you deployed. I would come here and just...think and hope you were okay. I used to look at the globe and tell myself that if this could make through 9/11, you could make it through your deployment. It was my symbol of hope that you would come back, even if it was a little beat up.” Her eyes moved across his face, resting briefly on the silver scar on his face. 

Jon took a drink of his coffee and turned himself towards her, “I kept hoping maybe Robb told you I’d deployed and I’d get a letter from you or something, but at the same time. I wanted you to focus on dancing and the new relationship you had going on. I wanted you to move on and forget about what we had even though I couldn’t. I didn’t want to hold you back and I knew that if I tried to reconnect with you and we did, you’d want to come back to Connecticut and I couldn’t be the one to do that. Not when I let you go. Not when you asked me what I wanted you to do and I told you to follow your dreams to the city.”

Sansa shook her head, squeezing his hand in hers gently, “I was already going to leave Jon. I just, I wanted you to tell me it was okay and that you would...you wouldn’t be angry with me or hate me for doing it. I never meant to hurt us and I didn’t expect things to get so...hard when I started getting into rehearsals and you left for basic. I thought, naively thought that things would be the same. That they would be easy like they were in Hartford. That even though we were far apart and busy we could keep developing whatever it was we were developing, but obviously that wasn’t true.” 

“I would never have hated you for pursuing what you wanted. I missed you and not talking as often as we did before sucked, but I didn’t ever hate you,” Jon told her. 

“Don’t get angry.” 

Sansa leaned in and pressed her lips to his, her hand cupping his cheek. His hand moved to rest on her lower back and pull her closer. They kissed slowly and it was a sweet kiss. She stroked his rough cheek with her leather gloved thumb and kissed him lightly before pulling back. She smiled at him and a half-smile slowly appeared on his lips, “I could never be angry with you Sansa.”

“I want us to stay in touch this time Jon. I don’t want you to drop off the face of my world again,” she told him, her thumb still gently moving across his cheek.

Jon leaned in and kissed her gently, “I’d like that.”

They spent a while longer walking the park and went to get dinner before going back to Sansa’s apartment. They spent the night watching movies, cuddled up in her bed until he had to leave to catch his plane back to Hartford. She caught a cab with him, programmed her number into his cell phone and added her email to her contact in his phone. She hugged him goodbye at the entrance to security. They shared a gentle, long kiss and he hugged her again before turning to walk through security. She sniffed and tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat as she watched him walk away. Before today, she wasn’t sure she’d ever see Jon Snow again, but she was glad she had. Sansa wasn’t sure what was going to happen with her and Jon but she was just glad to have him in her life again. She’d missed him and how easy it was to talk to him and to be around him. She was going to need to get her mom and Arya particularly nice Christmas gifts this year.


End file.
